Loyalty Leadership Forum is Racing Certainty in Newmarket

The odds were certainly favourable for Motivforce’s latest Loyalty Leadership Forum which took place at the historic Jockey Club Rooms in Newmarket, Suffolk, home of British horseracing. Building on the unbridled success of previous Forums, the event provided an ideal opportunity for Motivforce’s loyalty experts to showcase the latest B2B loyalty trends and share their wisdom with clients and channel marketeers from a broad mix of industries (including IT, technology, travel, rail and the veterinary sector) in an interactive group environment.

Introducing the Forum

The Forum began at the starting gates with high-profile case studies presented by our CEO, Dr David Cox. This included Motivforce’s award-winning Know Your IBM programme and the secrets of its success in exceeding IBM’s business objectives, generating major revenue and delivering ROI for the last 18 years.

The forum content

Our Research and development team, led by Associate Dean Professor Debbie Keeling and Professor Ko de Ruyter (two of Motivforce’s four PhD qualified loyalty ‘doctors’) gave insightful presentations into best practice and innovation in loyalty programme design, motivation and communication.

Intelligent and personalised loyalty 

A key session focused on ‘Preparing for the Age of Intelligent and Personalised Loyalty’.  This included case studies showing how to make use of big data to develop ‘personas’ for different types of programme participants. “When we set up a loyalty program, we are already thinking ahead to the deep-dive analytics that will enable us to identify the type of participant we need to nudge and communicate with to drive engagement and deliver ROI,” said Debbie Keeling. Personas range from Basic, Associate and Builder to Advocates, Trailblazers and Masters, based on breadth, recency, frequency and value of sales made by participants. “It’s important not to choose your target persona based on their sales turnover, but rather on recency and breadth of sales,” explained Debbie. “The Masters in your program have already reached the glass ceiling. So instead you should focus on Trailblazers to lift your profits, or encourage Basics to rise to Associates by encouraging them to transact more frequently.”

Designing Effective Communications

Another trending topic was ‘Designing Effective Communications’ that speak to participants based on psychological science – in other words whether your participant views life from the perspective of ‘glass half full’ or ‘glass half empty’. Are they a promotion or prevention type of individual? Loyalty as a concept is shrinking because programme members nowadays often don’t get round to spending their points – when that happens your loyalty program becomes a liability. Engagement has become the buzzword, but to get your members to spend their points, communications need to be designed around messaging that motivates them according to their personality type – whether they play to win, or play not to lose.

Incentive Travel and experiential rewards

Incentive group travel and experiential rewards still remain powerful motivational tools to drive engagement and performance in loyalty programs. Nick Merry, Motivforce Deputy CEO and APAC MD and incentive travel guru gave an insightful overview of latest trends, particularly planning trips that appeal to the new generation of Millennials who favour travel with a CSR aspect, emerging destinations, foodie factors, and Instagram appeal.

Global Trends

As Motivforce is a truly global company with offices in nine countries, operating programmes with participants in over 130 countries, Forum sessions included an overview of market trends in the USA and Australia by Lincoln Smith from our Boston office and John Kovacevic from our Sydney office respectively.

Highlights video

We were thrilled with the turnout of the event and the feedback post the event. Watch the video below for a highlights of the forum and see why you should be involved at our next loyalty leadership forum.

Entertainment

The final furlong of this year’s Loyalty Leadership Forum was an enjoyable evening of horse-racing at the legendary Newmarket July course followed by an entertaining setlist by world famous 80’s ska band Madness.